Updated: Patience pays off in rescuing work horse from frozen pond

LURGAN TOWNSHIP -- The horse that fell through the ice on Sunday is doing well, according to its owner.

"He's fine," Daniel Stoltzfus said on Tuesday. "He lost a little bit of weight."

The five-year-old work horse could not get out of an ice-covered farm pond at 10389 Newburg Road while Stoltzfus was at church.

"We hadn't planned to return after church," he said. "Somebody going by happened to see him. Thank goodness there are a lot of good people to help out."

He did not know about it until someone got him at church, Stoltzfus said.

Firefighters took an hour to lasso the 2,000-pound horse and pull him across the ice to safety around noon Sunday. The horse stood up.
Stotzfus said he brushed him off and led him to the barn. He closed up the barn and let the heat from the other horses warm him.

The horse has not been back to work because the fields are too wet, he said.

He's wondering if the horse is as smart as his others. Usually they stay off the iced pond unless its covered with snow, he said.

Feb. 11, 1:32 p.m.

ORRSTOWN -- Firefighters around noon on Sunday rescued a 2,000-pound horse from an ice-covered pond at 10389 Newburg Road in Lurgan Township.

The rescue took nearly an hour as a firefighter tried to throw a lasso 20 feet around the neck of a work horse that had fallen through the ice, according to Ed Hoover, fire chief of Newburg-Hopewell Volunteer Fire Company.

"The whole time we were trying to lasso the horse," Hoover said. "It was almost an impossibility to lasso the horse at that distance. The horse would put his head down to the water. Once the lasso was on his neck, it was a matter of a minute or two until the horse was on shore."

About a dozen people pulled on the rope and the horse cooperated by trying to get out, he said.

"We got him up out of the hole and onto the ice," Hoover said. "He couldn't stand. By pulling, we slid him to shore."

The horse stood up once he was off the ice. The owner took over. A veterinarian was on the way.

The horse apparently wandered onto the pond in the field where he was kept, Hoover said. He fell through four-inch thick ice. When firefighters arrived shortly after 11 a.m., the horse was sitting on the bottom of the pond with his head sticking out.

"We had no idea how long he was in the water," Hoover said. "He could not break the ice under his own power to come out."

The firefighter with the lasso had a knowledge and history with horses, Hoover said.

"Our company does not have the equipment to do ice rescues," Hoover said. "Our ability to do this is minimal."

Firefighters applied the rules of a water rescue -- throw, row and go -- without endangering their own safety.

Hoover said he called for the large animal rescue and ice rescue specialty teams from Carlisle and Monroe townships in Cumberland County. He also called Fayetteville Fire Department, the only fire department in Franklin County with ice rescue equipment. A water rescue unit had been alerted and was coming from the Susquehanna River.